


Either

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Like Good Soldiers [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Bonding, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Non-Consensual Touching, Pining, Pre-Vault, Prosthetics, Psychic Bonds, Psychic Wolves, Soldiers, WOLFBOND, Wolf Pack, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 19:47:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13666062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: Saltwater and parchmentis stubborn and fierce, sure;Basket of line-dried laundryhelps.





	Either

Nora walks across the stage in her cap and gown and accepts her diploma. It's easy. Satisfying. Pride flares in her chest from where she clawed her way through the establishment, too many sleepless nights and a few thousand cups of coffee.

Her family is not there to witness it.

Her father doesn't believe women need to go to college; that's part of why he keeps her mother close at home, and that's part of why Nora has a dozen siblings. Women have a  _ place. _

So does she. It's just not where her father wants her.

She makes her way from the stage, and after the ceremony she collects her suitcase, and then she goes to make her place.

-

She steps on the bus with no regrets.

It will be hard. If her father has taught her anything, it's that people have expectations of women. She knows the army will be no different; people will have expectations. There will be opinions as she walks in that she cannot change.

It will be hard. There is no way it won’t be. But: No regrets.

-

Two months in they take the survivors to the gym, cleared out and ready to meet their wolves.

Nora's heard nothing for days save the whispered comments from the rest of the barracks. Everyone assumes the women will end up with sisters. Why wouldn't they? That's just how genders work. Everyone fears they won’t get chosen at all, that they'll be cycled in with the next batch of recruits to walk among the wolves, and the next, and the next, never chosen.

Nora fears that, just a bit. A tiny part in her chest that is her father's expectations makes her fret. She doesn't sleep the night before. She unpacks her moving kit and then packs it again. If she's chosen she'll be moved with the others to new barracks, with the wolf-dens. If she's not chosen, she'll be moved to new barracks with the class behind her.

Nora's heard nothing except fears, because none of her group is strong enough to boast, though they all speculate. Several members have already been cycled back again.

The whole barracks is on their knees, kneeling for potential brothers and sisters. It's the wolf's choice, as much as the human's.

That it's a choice has been in her heart too, making it thunder in her ears. She is afraid not to be chosen. She is afraid to be chosen. She's nothing if she cannot make her own place in the world, if she must bow to the whims of her father.

She wants to  _ be something. _

She raises her hand when the first pup approaches, as they've been instructed. It's a mottled brown, and it sniffs her knuckles carefully, ears flattened; then it snorts and turns away. The answer is clear.  _ No. _

Nora swallows and waits. She is persistent. She will wait through classes and formations for as long as it takes.

A black approaches; gives a shake before she can even raise her hand, and passes her by.  _ No. _

A white, a red, a blue-grey.  _ No. _

Nora waits as the lines thin. Soldiers are leaving formation with brothers and sisters at their heels and in their arms. Wolves approach her and discard her just the same. Some take longer. Some barely approach.

She waits. She worries. The gym empties a little at a time.

Finally, the gym is empty of her brother and sister soldiers. Her training officer is standing by the BreedCom desks, his sister at his side, and Nora does not look at him. She can feel his dismay from all the way over here.

She does not know which one of them is more distraught.

She does not stand from her position.  _ Giving up _ is a defeat, and she  _ wants _ a wolf, she wants her place, whatever it is. She'll take it and be happy, as long as it's  _ hers. _

She is peripherally aware of the officer turning to look at the BreedCom officers here, and then stepping forward, walking out onto the gym floor. His boots snap sharply against the wood; his sister pads soundless beside him. "Fortune.."

Nora can feel, barely, the sense of pack. She can hear it when it's directed at her, when it's close. She knows he'll look out for her until she gets a wolf. She knows he won’t leave her behind. She  _ knows. _

She knows he does not  _ want _ to move her. She knows he must.

He squeezes her shoulder in apology, and she hangs her head. "I've talked to BreedCom. You can come back tomorrow with the second wave of the barrack. You've been here for five hours, Fortune. Go catch some rack. Come on; up we go."

He tugs on her shoulder, and up she goes, just that easy. She trusts him. He'll stay with her; he'll wait. He lets her lean on him, her knees sore, her legs weak from lack of blood flow. He waits. Nora loves him, just a little.

She thinks this is what fathers were supposed to be.

"Sorry sir."

"No one gives a shit, Fortune. But you've got to try to get some sleep tonight, I swear."

She doesn't have a wolf yet. She knows she won’t sleep at all.

She'll try anyway.

She gets her legs back under her. He waits. But when she turns to begin her march out-- she can feel, in the pack-sense she can barely feel, that no one present would begrudge her not saluting, that the BreedCom officers know, that they understand, they know what it's like to want-- but her Officer doesn't let her go. His grip is tight on her shoulder and she's not permitted to turn, but he's not even looking at her.

There's a grey wolf.

Feet and legs black like it had been playing in the mud. It's been raining for days; maybe it has. Maybe it likes it. But they're that color naturally, they must be, because he's not leaving muddied tracks.

She's hit with a wave of homesickness and longing and her vision blurs. She smells the scent of the ocean and cartography papers. She smells the scent of fresh laundry, clean and drying, plastic laundry bin nearby, flowers on the wind on the plains. Things she - he - they wanted, always, and never had.

She thinks: that’s home.

“Fortune?” Her officer asks, and it’s backed by  _ salt and water and wind, old books in a fresh cabin _ , the scent of an officer’s room on a sailing ship.

She settles to her knees-- he lets her, helps her, he  _ stays _ \-- and she gathers her wolf up into her arms.

_ Home _ settles through her, but all she can say is, “Sir, he’s got  _ socks _ .”

-

He has socks and he smells like a basket of line-dried laundry.

The BreedCom officers swap papers and files, slip them into a vanilla folder with her name and number bold-printed on the front. She has forty-eight hours to fill it out, but she’s already got a head start.

He has a name.

He’s  _ Socks _ .

Her Officer finds her a few days later and says, casually, “You know, my sis and I didn’t think he’d find anybody to match with. She named all his siblings after  _ snakes _ .”

Nora loves them all.

-

Military Law states that Breed Command have to provide all the necessary things to ensure a successful wolf-heat, barring the temperament of the wolves themselves denying one or all partners.

_ All _ is subjective, of course.

To the brothers and sisters of the bitches, the requirements are a secure place to have this heat; a shack, a room, the dark side of the moon, it doesn't matter. They have to provide food and water. Necessary preparation. Lubricant. They have to ensure the safety of the bitch and her brother or sister. Dependent on the wolf, the whelps, various situations, another of those requirements is heat suppressants. Sometimes surgery; not all wolves can carry to term, not all wolves are meant to have pups. Sometimes surgery even if they are, because pregnancy and labor are never things that are easy on anybody, wolf or not.

If the bitch has a sister: Contraceptives.

The law states that adequate compensation for the offspring shall be provided, and that barring situations in which it cannot be helped, the end of the pregnancy will be spent in a safe and secure location.

Nora knows all of this because she knew she would have a wolf, and she had no idea if it would be a brother or a sister. She knows all this because she went to law school and it would be absolutely ridiculous to join the military without knowing the books.

For the male wolf, of course, the brother-- and it's usually a brother-- is given compensation for time. Of course. Condoms. Food and water. The males and their siblings need less care.

But the law says: all things required.

When Nora and Socks are called for their medical exam, almost a week after bonding, there is of course a BreedCom officer there. Nora knew why he was there before she even stepped inside the room, because law is Nora's forte.

It's a full work-up, and Nora's not shy about it. The medics are a doctor with a doctor's view of the world-- and for him, it's all business-- and his equal in rank, a doctor who majors almost entirely in wolf-siblings, and she is just as professional. The Officer, however, spends it not looking at either Nora or Socks, and looking very, very pink.

It's only after she's clothed again that he even glances her way. "There's one more thing we need to discuss."

"Of course there is. Is there a form I need to fill out for it?"

"Excuse me?"

Nora clears her throat. Remembers that she's talking to an officer who's actually already made it through Basic Training. "Sir. Forgive me for saying, but there's literally no way I'm going to be able to satisfy any bitch's sibling unless I've got something to fill them with. So I'm going to need a dick. That's why you're here, isn't it? To get me one?"

The poor office turns scarlet, and it's delicious.

There is, in fact, a form for her to fill out. Which is properly amazing.

The wolf-trained physician suggests a full-on depth-anchor prosthetic for better satisfaction and penetration. Then she slyly admits she ordered the same, the last time her brother was called in to perform. 

It is the sort of recommendation that Nora can't say no to, even though Socks is only a few months old and months more away from ever ending up in a heat-shack with a bitch. Still, the military only ever pays for the first one. She is definitely unwilling to let this particular chance pass her by.

At least the BreedCom officer doesn't combust while they have this conversation.

Nora considers that icing on the cake.

-

Nora gets Socks' name tattooed on her breast even before she graduates; his name and his identification number, and a pup-sized paw print.

She wears a copy of her brother's ID plate on her dog tags, and in turn, he bears a copy of her own. The tags are military requirement, of course, but there's a great deal of pride when she strips and sees the silver against her chest, next to the ink declaring her a wolf-sibling.

Also her new tool between her legs. As promised, it is well-anchored; it fills her own body, anchoring inside her body as well as sealed against her flesh with a re-applicable body-safe glue that requires a particular solvent to dissolve for safe and painless removal. 

The marvels of science. She can step behind a tree and take a piss without dropping her pants; she can get hard and spill in a lover, though the liquid is little more than syrupy falsehood designed to mimic the consistency, the prosthetic still responds to physical stimulation and the machinery it's built around still translates contact and desire to and from her via the nerve clusters. It's easy enough to fill with synthetic ejaculate, but even if she doesn't, it operates just the same empty.

Nora has to actually go find the doctor and thank her for the suggestion, because she can't imagine any strap-on providing anything anywhere similar. She had to get waxed, but damn if it isn't worth it.

-

With Socks at her side, Nora makes it through the rest of training and on through Graduation easily. There are laws-- Military and Civilian alike-- against severing a wolf-bond. It's difficult to do, legally, and the Military loathed to lose any of its soldiers, so they rarely do it. Maybe a dozen people in the last century.

Socks is a soldier just like she is, and the military needs soldiers, and they are very much not of the school of happily permitting their wolf-soldiers into civilian life without a term of service. Anybody who bonds ends up serving a minimum of two years, almost without fail.

Nora Fortune is a soldier, and there is no going back.

She and her brother would have it no other way.

-

She only calls her folks to let them know for a few closely guarded reasons. One of them is still the lingering hope that they'll be proud of her.

The other is that Socks cannot fathom why they would not, or why she's afraid of being stripped from the pack she was born in.

Military wolves have only a loose concept of birth-packs equating to human families. And sometimes brothers or sisters go into the same deployment, or they end up on the same field as their parents, but birth-pack isn't hunting-pack, not really. It's only with Nora that Socks has ever hunted, and Nora is his human-sister, and Nora's pack in the great pack that is-- the Army as a whole, in Socks' head, was a  _ very big _ pack, a great many wolves strong to overtake the enemies that are invading the territory, and it was made up of progressively smaller packs, and in one of those smaller packs would be himself and Nora, and they would lead one of the smaller packs inside the small pack, because the big-pack said so.

And her litter-pack should respect that. They should be  _ proud. _ And if they weren't, then...

Then Nora should just sever the pack-bond she had with them.

So she called, and she did, and then she and her brother got on a plane bound for the Alaskan front.

She had Socks, and her training officer had been a better father than her father ever had.

-

The other Lieutenant is Shaun Darling, and he and his brother Rain greeted them amicably enough. The wolves' scents complimented each other somewhat, the freshness of a spring rain, and Lieutenant Darling shook her hand like an actual human being without once looking at her tits.

The Captain was a man named Mitchell, no first name applied; he had a solid, no nonsense attitude that Nora immediately liked. It felt like a good outfit. 

-

Captain Mitchell propositioned her outside the Officer's Mess; and by propositioned, Nora meant that he'd been hopefully intoxicated when he grab at her breasts and shoved his hand down her pants to figure out the bulge between her legs wasn't a wad of tissue paper.

She refused him immediately, of course; but it did somewhat sour her perceptions of him somewhat. Especially when she was called to his office and told she could make it up to him, since she liked to use her mouth so much.

A week after she refused him thusly, her demotion papers were delivered and an MP came to take her rank.

He didn't seem to give a fuck that she glared at her superior officer the whole time, though, so Nora decided that she liked the man well enough.

-

Privates Hawken and Von Hout welcomed her into their team without a care at all for her rank or lack thereof, and they introduced her to the rest of the squad. One person-- and only one person-- asked which set was the real deal, and then cackled when Nora slyly offered to show them.

"You're all right, Fortune. Hout, cough up the moonshine, let's break the boy in proper with a toast."

"Fortune didn't say he was a man," one of the others stammered, quiet and mousy, and Nora smiled, relaxed.

"Boy's as good as girl. I'll answer to both of them if you like."


End file.
